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“A Massive Staggering Hypocrite”: Van Badham Went In On Barnaby Joyce On ‘Q&A’

Journalist and social commentator Van Badham has gone hard after Barnaby Joyce, labelling the embattled deputy prime minister “a massive staggering hypocrite” over his affair with a former staffer.

Badham, a regular columnist for The Guardian, was a panellist on last night’s episode of Q&A, where the Deputy PM’s name came up a fair bit. Joyce has been under fire since his affair was made public last week — especially after it emerged that the staffer in question was appointed to two roles in the offices of Joyce’s government colleagues while the affair was allegedly taking place.

When a member of the Q&A audience asked the panel whether the public had a right to know about Joyce’s private life given how he sold himself as a family man with conservative values, Badham said it was Joyce’s hypocrisy over issues such as marriage equality and women’s health that struck her as especially galling.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather know less about than a politician’s sex life,” she said. “Adults are complicated. If adults have consenting relationships with other adults, that is their business.”

“Barnaby Joyce is an international news item not because he’s had an affair,” she continued. “He’s an international news item because he is a massive staggering hypocrite. “[He’s] a person who passed judgement on the LGBTQI community in this country. He’s also passed judgement on young women.”

Badham went on to slam the Deputy PM for his past opposition to the free provision of a cervical cancer vaccine. In 2006, when the government was debating whether to include the drug Gardasil on the national vaccination schedule, Joyce questioned the “social implications”, claiming that some people might be concerned about the drug giving young women and girls “a licence to be promiscuous”.

“My god Barnaby, how awful” remarked Badham sarcastically.

Badham also called bullshit on Joyce’s opposition to marriage equality on the grounds that he was a supporter of “traditional marriage”.

“As somebody who watched their friends and their family members go through two months of orchestrated public political hell with the postal survey, I find his conduct absolutely disgraceful,” she said.

“If he wants to affirm a traditional view of marriage and not live up to it, I think his time of judging other people’s personal lives is over”.

As it happens, things have gotten even worse for Joyce since Badham delivered her broadside last night. This morning, The Westreported that the Deputy PM used his $10,000 “family reunion” allowance after his former staffer fell pregnant with his child.

Joyce has also been accused of sexually harassing an anonymous woman at a Canberra bar in 2011, although he has strongly denied the allegation.